


Your Song

by aHostileRainbow



Category: Nightside Series - Simon R. Green
Genre: Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-11
Updated: 2009-10-11
Packaged: 2017-10-09 01:45:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/81639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aHostileRainbow/pseuds/aHostileRainbow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Several years after Nightingale's Lament. "I'll write a song about you, someday." ... "That'd be nice."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Song

_I wrote your song. Please come hear it. ~Ross_

That was all she wrote, but it was enough. A thin VIP pass fell from the folded note into the palm of my hand and I smiled, small and nostalgic.

Two days later, I stood at the very front of a massive crowd before the stage illuminated by hundreds of lights, large and small. Then she came walking out and I stood quiet, but smiling, as a goddess of music graced the suddenly plain stage to roars of adoration. She beamed out at the crowd and walked steadily to her microphone, but all the way she kept turning her head to and fro, searching for something…for someone.

After a moment of watching her search in vain, I flared my Gift, knowing that with all she had been through there was no way she couldn’t sense it, if not See it. Her head snapped round and her eyes met mine and my smile got a little broader as her beam got a little brighter. I nodded my head in acknowledgement and she laughed aloud her joy.

Without further ado, she clutched the microphone closer and began belting out her reason for being, her beloved music. After three sets, she paused in her characteristic chain smoking and spoke, her voice husky, “This next song is dedicated to one of the most amazing men I’ve ever known, the man who saved my life when I was only getting started and helped to make me who I am. John, I promised you your song and here it is.”

She started in, and for the first time that night, the audience was utterly silent. No one had heard this song before and no one would have interrupted anyway. Ross had always had a gift for capturing every aspect of life in her songs and this was no exception.

Her voice caressed the notes, crooning out the tune, and it was hunting and being hunted, it was Seeing, it was desperation, it was triumph, it was power and loss and the glorious light at the end of the longest, darkest tunnel you’ve ever been trapped in. It was tears and heartbreak and the terrible silence at the end of the world. It was oblivion, creation, and all the necessary choices you never want to make. It was me. And the Nightside. And life, though a hard one.

When she finished, there was a moment of respectful silence, though few could have said why in any simple words. And Ross stood at her microphone, smiled, and blew me a kiss.

Later, I stood knocking on her dressing room door as I had so many years ago in a very different world. I stepped forward at her, Come in!, and smiled when she rose in her graceful way and embraced me warmly, welcomingly.

I kept smiling when she finally pulled away and offered her the flowers I’d remembered to buy this time. Still smiling, because I just couldn’t seem to stop at this point, I kissed her cheek softly and murmured, “Thank you, Ross. It was beautiful.”

She beamed once more and blew me one more kiss as I walked out the door without another word. She knew me, and she knew that the words hardly mattered.


End file.
